Conrad Johnson

Professor Johnson

Education 231-050

April 4, 2010

Article Critique

            The following article is being critiqued “Determinants of Complexity in Mexican-American and Anglo-American Mothers’ Conceptions of Child Development.” The article was written by Jeannie Gutierrez and Arnold Sameroff. The article was investigating different mothers’ view of child development in relation to their ethnic background and their extent of acculturation within the larger U.S. society. Both writers were comparing middle-class Mexican-American mothers who differ in their degree of acculturation with Euro-American mothers who are also from the middle class.

            The subjects were 60 middle class, professional Mexican-American and Anglo-American mothers, divided into three groups. One group was 20 moderately acculturated Mexican-American mothers; the second group was 20 highly acculturated Mexican-American mothers and a group of 20 Anglo-American mothers. The three groups were matched for age and socioeconomic status (SES).

            The article stated that all interviews were conducted in the subjects’ homes and in their preferred language. They had five different measures that was used to measure in the interview. The first measure was concepts of development, this measure was used to assess the level of complexity at which mothers understood development. The second measure was acculturation, this measured the level of acculturation. The ARSMA consisted of 20 items designed to assess the acculturation such as language familiarity, usage, and reference; ethnic identity and generation; reading, writing, and cultural exposure; and ethnic interaction. The third measure was biculturalism, this measures the degree to which a person feels comfortable and involved in Hispanic and Anglo-American cultures independently of each other. The fourth measure was intelligence, this measured maternal intelligence, and they administered a vocabulary subtest of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R). The last measure was traditionalism, this measure was based on a scale called The Traditional Family Ideology Scale (TFIS), and this was used to assess endorsement of traditional values. The scale is composed of 12 6 point Likert-type items.

            At the conclusion of the article the authors discussed their views on the findings they observed after the doing the assessments on the sixty middle class mothers. In their discussion, they stated the concepts-of-development measure was designed to assess the level of complexity at which parents understood development. Also, biculturalism was found to be a correlate of complexity in Mexican-American mother’s concepts of development. They said the relative effects of acculturation and biculturalism were examined in a comparison of Mexican-American mothers who varied on both dimensions. 

            My overall opinion of this article was truly astonished. After reading this article, I found out information I did not know before reading this. Just like the article outlined that Gutierrez and Sameroff provided insight into the relationship between acculturation and traditional cultural values and its effect on how mothers think about how to raise their children truly was portrayed throughout the text. To my understanding of the article, it was fully cleared about the method of research. Also, the literature review was focused on the problem, it was like an insight on the actual problem. Both authors made the findings legible for anyone to understand what they were saying and they put it together well. I feel that nothing else was needed to make the article any better it was good as it was.